Chebukati Praises IEBC Portal Accessed 386 Million Times During Elections

Outgoing Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chairperson Wafula Chebukati on Monday, January 16 recognised the commission's portal which was made available for Kenyans to access during the August 9 general elections.

Speaking during the launch of the Post Election Evaluation Report, Chebukati praised the IEBC for creating a secure portal for Kenyans to access and tally the presidential results from anywhere, at their own convenience.

He noted that the portal was logged in 386 million times for access to the results from Form 34A, 34B and 34C and those who had counted the results from the portal had got the same outcome as that announced by the IEBC.

"We deployed a secure public portal where election results from Form 34A, 34B and 34C were hosted for the nation and the world to access. A record 386 million logins were reported to the portal and those that tallied the results got the same results as the IEBC results in Form 34C.

"This was the game-changer in the elections and elevated the aspect of transparency to a whole new level," he praised.

As soon as voting closed on August 9, the counting of votes by the IEBC kicked off and for 2022, the commission prepared a portal where Kenyans could count the votes for the presidential elections by themselves.

All 46,229 Form 34As were available and all one needed was a calculator and a keen eye for detail, and some willingness to endure long, tiring nights counting the votes from all 46,229 polling stations.

Kenya's media houses were not to be left behind, as they utilised their additional manpower to calculate the votes and stream them through TV stations, but the varying numbers suddenly threw Kenyans into mass confusion.

The tallying later stopped as the official announcement of the results drew closer, even though multinational media houses kept at it until the final few days.

President William Ruto was declared the winner with a total vote count of 7,176,141 (50.49 per cent) against his closest rival, Raila Odinga of the Azimio la Umoja coalition with a total of 6,942,930 (48.85 per cent).

It was later revealed that the portal was an alternative to the commission providing real-time presidential results as they were announced in polling stations across the country, which was one of the grounds for the 2017 elections being nullified by the Supreme Court.

In the 2016 petition by Maina Kiai, a former chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, the Court of Appeal determined that presidential election results at the constituency level as contained in forms 34A are final and the IEBC cannot alter them for whatever reason.